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The Mammoth Steppe was the dominant terrestrial biome of the Northern Hemisphere during the late Pleistocene. It encompassed a nonanalog community of animals living in a cold and treeless steppe-tundra landscape. The high diversity of species, including megafauna, could be supported by a productive environment. The carbon-13 and nitrogen-15 abundances in bone collagen confirmed that the coexistence of the large herbivores was facilitated by a pronounced dietary niche partitioning, with some species relatively flexible in the exploitation of browse and graze, while others were more specialized. The isotopic abundances of carbon and nitrogen in carnivores confirm a dietary partitioning, probably based on the size of prey, with an increasingly generalist behavior emerging after the Last Glacial Maximum with notable exceptions. Isotopic investigation reveals dynamic processes of ecological displacement and replacement, shedding new light on the potential niche spectrum of extant species that are now present as relic populations.
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Download the Supplemental Data for Figure 5 (XLSX). Revised version posted on April 18, 2022.